1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an article processing facility and a method of operation thereof, and more particularly to an article processing facility comprising at least one article transport device for transporting an article to be transported, transport control means for controlling an operation of the at least one article transport device, managing control means for managing transport data which is generated by associating a transport origin and a transport destination for the article to be transported with unique identifying information, and for sending to the transport control means a transport command for transporting an article to be transported from the transport origin to the transport destination based on the transport data for the article to be transported, and display control means for causing display means to display transport-data-associated information that corresponds to the transport data, based on the transport data managed by the managing control means as well as to a method of operation thereof.
2. Description of the Related Art
In the article processing facility described above, when the managing control means issues a transport command, for transporting an article to be transported from the transport origin to the transport destination, to transport control means for controlling the operation of an article transport device based on transport data obtained by associating the transport origin and the transport destination of the article to be transported with unique identifying information, the transport control means controls the operation of the article transport device based on the transport command in order to transport the article to be transported from the transport origin to the transport destination as specified in the transport data.
Examples of such conventional article processing facility include a facility having display control means for displaying, on display means, the contents (e.g., identification number for transport data, transport origin, and transport destination) of the transport command which the managing control means issued to the transport control means based on transport data. (See, for example, JP Application Publication No. 4-280703, Paragraphs [0033], [0034], and FIG. 7.)
When the managing control means causes a subject article to be transported from the transport origin to the transport destination by the article transport device in order to process a transport request from a superordinate controller, the managing control means manages the transport operation of the article based on the transport data which specifies the transport origin and the transport destination. In other words, each article is handled as an article that should be transported from the transport origin to the transport destination as specified by respective transport data. Therefore, each article is managed as a transported object associated with the transport data regardless of its attribute information (i.e., various kinds of information such as goods code, lot number, name of the goods, number of goods stored, and the source of the goods etc. for the stored goods when the articles are item holders such as containers for storing goods, for example).
In the conventional article processing facility described above, the display control means is configured to display the contents of the transport command which is obtained based on the transport data managed by the managing control means. In other words, while a human operator can see the specifics of the transport operations (such as the transport origin and destination for an article) in the conventional facility, attribute information of the article is not displayed on display means; therefore, the operator cannot see the attribute information of the articles to be transported.
Thus, when the articles to be transported are item holders such as containers, even if the operator wishes to know the details of the article such as the attribute of the goods housed in the item holder, the operator cannot see them from the display on the display means. And in order to see the attribute information of an article, there was an inconvenience of having to provide and operate, for example, a separate device that obtains attribute information from another managing control means which manages the attribute information of articles. In addition, for example, when a transporting problem occurs during the transporting of an article to be transported, even if the cause of the transporting problem is unique to the goods, it was difficult to notice that the cause of the transporting problem is unique to the goods since the attribute information of the article cannot be displayed easily on the display means.